StoredIQ’s unique approach to conducting early case assessment on data “in the wild”, has been recognized by analysts at IDC as a market differentiator in their 2011 MarketScape: Worldwide Standalone Early Case Assessment Applications Report. The report evaluates the capabilities of early case assessment (ECA) vendor solutions and is designed to help CIOs, corporate legal counsel, compliance officers, and legal service providers understand the key capabilities, the evolving use cases, and market and technology dynamics for the early case assessment solutions and the broader eDiscovery market segment. Among the twelve vendors included in the report, IDC positioned StoredIQ as a leader in the standalone ECA space, a market forecasted by IDC to total $400.8 million in 2011 and reach $857.0 million in 2015.

According to IDC, “Customers cite StoredIQ’s ability to enable the analysis and culling of data at the source prior to preservation and collection as a key differentiator.” IDC goes on to say that StoredIQ “Boasts highly rated indexing, search, and retrieval performance, and the ability to scale. Customers that are looking to search and analyze the universe of content prior to collection highly rate StoredIQ’s ability to scale, as well as StoredIQ’s search and retrieval performance.”

IDC’s recognition of StoredIQ as a market leader validates our innovative and novel approach to conducting ECA prior to preservation and collection. Our powerful ability to perform early case analysis on data where it natively resides gives legal counsel the ability to assess the merits of a dispute, formulate a legal strategy, and make decisions concerning the matter far earlier in the eDiscovery process. Unique among evaluated vendors, StoredIQ’s approach yields a much stronger ROI as data is identified, understood and culled where it lives in the enterprise rather than after costly collections, culling and processing in a central location.

StoredIQ’s early case assessment offering is part of the company’s DiscoveryIQ application. Product strengths and key differentiators identified by IDC include:

• Ability to directly connect to and search a variety of data sources including: major messaging systems (Exchange, Notes/Domino), distributed endpoints, network file shares, export files, major archival and storage systems (EMCCentera, Hitachi HCAP, IBM FileNet, IBM Information Archive, NetApp Snaplock, Symantec Enterprise Vault), content management systems (EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet), and Microsoft SharePoint (including wikis and blogs in addition to document libraries), and laptops/desktops.
• Ability to enable the analysis and culling of data at the source, prior to preservation and collection.
• Highly rated indexing, search and retrieval performance, as well as the ability to scale.
• Ability to perform real-time what-if risk/reward assessments utilizing the DiscoveryIQ application. Based on different culling decisions, customers can see a real-time “scoreboard” provide updated estimates of review costs for a given data set or case.
• Streamlined workflow designed to enable IT and the legal users to collaborate throughout the eDiscovery process.

To learn more about StoredIQ’s Early Case Assessment solution:

• Download an excerpt from the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Standalone Early Case Assessment Applications Report
• Download StoredIQ AnalyzeAnywhere Technology Brief
• Email info@storediq.com

Most eDiscovery solutions are limited in their visibility and scope to just SharePoint Document Libraries and a subset of metadata. They also lack the intelligence to distinguish between multiple versions of documents, and may return very large and inflated data sets for content analysis. In contrast, the StoredIQ solution fully supports all core SharePoint object types and all associated metadata including: Blogs, Wikis, Comments, Discussion Boards, Calendars, Tasks, Contacts, Issue Trackers, Announcements, Surveys, Links, Project Tasks, Picture Libraries, Records Center and Document Libraries.

For a demonstration and more information, visit StoredIQ this week at LegalTech West in Los Angeles – booth #204 – or visit www.StoredIQ.com to download eDiscovery for SharePoint resources.

StoredIQ eDiscovery for SharePoint Resources:

• Taneja Group White Paper: StoredIQ Flagship eDiscovery for SharePoint
• IDC Product Flash: StoredIQ Addresses Information Management Opportunity Around SharePoint Content
• StoredIQ SharePoint Technical Brief
• StoredIQ Extends Industry-Leading eDiscovery and Information Management Support for Microsoft SharePoint

As is the case with most organizations these days we were faced with a growing amount of electronic data across our enterprise and needed to ensure complete control of that information. With StoredIQ we better understand the state of our data and work in tandem with our legal team, so they can formulate legal strategies earlier in the process and as a result significantly reduce eDiscovery-related cost.

– Carol Campbell-Larson, executive vice president and CIO, information systems at MGM

Every company deals with exponentially growing data volumes, but the entertainment industry is unique when it comes to eDiscovery and IP protection. Disputes over copyright, trademark, right of publicity and idea submission claims – to name just a few – are ever-present in the motion picture business. MGM is one of the forward-thinking companies who have moved the eDiscovery process in-house and are proactively managing their information to protect their data assets to reduce related risk and cost.

Market-leading companies like MGM use StoredIQ to respond rapidly and efficiently to legal matters, litigation, and investigations. Utilizing StoredIQ, corporate legal teams can locate, analyze and act upon unstructured electronically stored information much more comprehensively and efficiently. As a result, companies can better manage their legal risk and reduce expenses, while formulating superior legal strategies. With StoredIQ, MGM and other companies can:

• Proactively manage their corporate data assets to meet their eDiscovery and regulatory compliance mandates
• Quickly locate matter-relevant ESI with advanced search technology
• Analyze electronic documents “in the wild”, where they natively reside without having to move data to a separate location
• Leverage a user-friendly legal and IT workflow and a scoreboard that keeps track of review costs as data is identified, preserved and collected
• Preserve and collect only the smallest legally defensible dataset to a secure legal hold repository, preserving all metadata and context
• Perform first-pass reviews on documents before exporting data downstream
• Act on and manage potentially relevant data in a legally defensible manner with audit trails and a robust chain of custody.

With StoredIQ, MGM streamlines eDiscovery, leverages early case analysis and reduces cost while proactively managing their IP data assets.

To learn more about StoredIQ, visit our website, or email us at info@storediq.com.

“While the debate on the usefulness and effectiveness of ECA continues, it should be noted that how the term is defined continues to evolve. Some of the service providers adapted quickly enough to have ECA as part of their “arsenal” a few years ago. Many of these tools were designed to filter metadata after collection and help the company decide how much a case will cost. This is a noble objective, but not completely in line with the original intent of ECA — which was to help an organization determine its risk exposure and make strategic decisions about a case based on that analysis.”

We couldn’t agree more. In fact, we’ve been talking about the importance of performing ECA at an earlier phase of the EDRM for a while now. We believe that for ECA to have its greatest potential impact it needs to be performed during the identification phase of EDRM, prior to collections. StoredIQ’s ECA technology, Analyze Anywhere, indexes unstructured electronic data and makes it available for searching and analysis without affecting metadata or content, prior to any movement or collection of data.  This ability to do ECA on data “in the wild” allows legal counsel to assess the merits of a dispute, formulate a legal strategy, and make decisions concerning the matter significantly faster than post-collection ECA. Additionally, it makes the data set that is ultimately produced for downstream, formal review not only qualitatively enriched and context aware, but also considerably smaller, thereby significantly reducing legal costs and risks. According to Rudoy:

“The premise of early case assessment is to give legal teams the ability to conduct up-front, fast, intelligent data gathering, with probative queries on the dataset to reduce it to a relevant universe that can be assessed.  Legal teams have a need to see “what they got” faster than what traditional EDD services typically can provide. “

StoredIQ can form threads, comparisons, relationships and statistics much faster than human reviewers can. Our user interface includes dynamic visuals, detailed reports and an intuitive dashboard to accomplish in-depth analysis of once unwieldy amounts of discovered data.  As the data set is culled —by custodian, file type, email domain, date range, key terminology, etc. — the StoredIQ Scoreboard presents a running count of the files retained (and eliminated from consideration) and automatically calculates the potential savings from the downstream review cycle.

By accomplishing ECA near the beginning of the eDiscovery workflow, ECA finally achieves the goals it originally set out to accomplish for improved legal strategy decisions and cost reduction.

We wanted to better understand what data we have, where it resides and determine how we can better manage our information across the enterprise and do so in a proactive manner. With StoredIQ we are able to make intelligent decisions about the state of our data based on corporate policies and legal discovery requirements. – Tony Balding, vice president, software solutions at Madison

From a GC’s perspective, we needed a solution that allowed me to work closely with the IT department, analyze the data to determine the merits of a dispute quickly, understand related review cost and provide a defensible audit trail. StoredIQ exceeded that expectation with their unique capabilities, such as analyzing data where it natively resides, the user-friendly legal and IT workflow, and the scoreboard that keeps track of review costs as data is identified, preserved and collected. – Judy Michael, assistant vice president, legal, asset and risk management at Madison

Market-leading companies use StoredIQ to respond rapidly and efficiently to legal matters, litigation, and investigations. Utilizing StoredIQ, corporate legal teams can locate, analyze and act upon unstructured electronically stored information much more comprehensively and efficiently. As a result, companies can better manage their legal risk and reduce expenses, while formulating superior legal strategies. With StoredIQ, companies:

• Quickly locate matter-relevant electronic documents with advanced search technology
• Analyze electronic documents in-place with detailed data topology maps, advanced analytics, and precise data explorers
• Preserve and collect data to a secure legal hold repository, preserving all metadata and business context
• Perform first-pass reviews on documents before exporting data downstream
• Act on and manage potentially relevant data in a legally defensible manner with audit trails and a robust chain of custody

StoredIQ’s award-winning solution streamlines eDiscovery processes for legal and IT, allows for early case analysis “in the Wild,” and provides complete cost predictability.

Analyze Anywhere Moves ECA Into 'The Wild'

In a recent eDiscovery Journal article, Barry Murphy wrote about the trend of Early Case Assessment (ECA) moving even earlier in the eDiscovery process to be more in line with the identification and collection phase of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM). Murphy explains how, by adopting an integrated ECA solution, organizations can simplify the eDiscovery process, and are able to achieve the following results:

• Quickly begin analyzing content without having to move or copy data
• Eliminate over-collection by enabling precise data culling prior to preservation
• Review file contents with keywords and entities of interest highlighted
• Use tagging to mark files of interest or group objects together relating to a common task

We agree with Barry’s assessment, as we see the same trend amongst our customers.  In fact we’ve been talking about this trend ourselves for a while now.  Our Early Case Analysis solution indexes unstructured electronic data and makes it available for searching and analysis without affecting metadata or content, prior to any movement or collection of data.  This ability to do early case analysis on data “in the wild” gives legal counsel the ability to assess the merits of a dispute, formulate a legal strategy, and make decisions concerning the matter significantly faster than traditional ECA.

What about you? If you’ve seen the same trend, tell us about it. If you’ve experienced something different, we’d like to hear about that too. For more information visit Early Case Analysis with StoredIQ’s Analyze Anywhere.

Working for an information management company I might be a bit jaded toward the lack of visibility TV dramas provide into the discovery process. However I do know it’s unlikely you’re going to find key evidence or a “smoking gun” wadded up in a trash can in the bad guy’s office – though it seems to happen a lot on TV. No, more than likely you are going to have to wade through terabytes or even petabyes of electronic data from multiple custodians spread across email, file shares, laptops, document management systems, etc.  Your first thoughts are probably, “How long is this going to take and how much is it going to cost?”

Organizations must expect the unexpected and be prepared to deal with several concurrent matters with varying electronic discovery requirements. In a recent whitepaper from Brian Babineau, senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, he discusses the often unpredictable and challenging eDiscovery process – and the opportunities that in-house eDiscovery solutions provide for real world improvement including:

• Incorporate All Data – ensure that your eDiscovery solution is comprehensive and goes beyond email to include other corporate ESI sources – locating the data you need to make informed case strategy decisions and minimizing your risk for non-disclosure sanctions.

• Timeliness Matter – other than meeting tight deadlines, organizations can benefit from speeding up the eDiscovery process by meeting the duty to preserve early, more accurately predicting case budgets, preparing for initial case assessments, and reducing reliance on outsourced review resources when pressed for time.

• Resource Scalability – utilizing a holistic eDiscovery solution, corporations can ensure that all departments and users involved in the legal discovery process are not overburdened by disparate tools and technologies, and that productivity isn’t impacted as the amount of corporate information and number of matters continues to grow.

As Mr. Babineau states in the paper, “Electronic discovery, when supported by the right technology has the potential to deliver benefits greater than a simple reduction of legal service provider costs. Corporate counsel can near-instantaneously analyze data to see what should be collected and preserved, enabling them to make strategic decisions sooner in the legal process, and swiftly adapt as new information is discovered.”

Perhaps as more organizations adopt in-house eDiscovery solutions, the legal discovery process will become more intelligent, less cumbersome, and less costly. And who knows, one day it may start to resemble the legal dramas we watch on TV. 

For more in-depth information, download the complete whitepaper from Enterprise Strategy Group.

“StoredIQ continues to deliver an industry leading product that provides customers with deep intelligence and understanding into their data and gives them the ability to quickly act on that information – this is why StoredIQ is again on our list of Trend-Setting Products.”

Hugh McKellar, editor in chief of KMWorld

StoredIQ recently announced the availability of its 6th generation award-winning solution. StoredIQ 6.0 is designed to empower corporate counsel with a legal-friendly, best-of-breed application – eDiscoveryManager – that addresses the wide range of legal discovery requirements, including search, identification, collection, early case assessment (ECA) and analysis, as well as legal hold and review. By integrating an easy to use eDiscovery application with the power of the StoredIQ platform, legal teams have a single solution to make more informed strategic decisions in less time, cut the cost of litigation and reduce legal risk.

We are very pleased to again be recognized by KMWorld and its judges. The continued recognition as a Trend-Setting Product of the Year is a testament to our dedication and commitment to enabling organizations to manage their information according to its business value and reduce cost and risk in the process.

Need to streamline eDiscovery process, predict legal review cost and make strategic legal decisions much sooner?

With the rise in opinions and sanctions issued on electronic discovery, this new white paper from analyst firm Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), is provided to help corporate counsel and legal professionals address the new eDiscovery realities which include managing multiple concurrent matters – with varying eDiscovery requirements, across multiple custodians, locating electronically stored information (ESI) that is spread across disparate data sources – all on tighter budgets and timelines.

“As the amount of electronic discovery related opinions and sanctions increases, organizations must be prepared to efficiently manage the complexities of responding to today’s legal matters that involve ESI,” said Brian Babineau, senior analyst with ESG and author of the whitepaper.  “StoredIQ allows companies to standardize electronic discovery processes on a single platform, while providing the flexibility that corporate counsel needs to better prepare case budgets and make more informed legal decisions.”

In this paper, StoredIQ Accelerates Electronic Discovery While Providing Cost Predictability, Mr. Babineau discusses how StoredIQ enables companies to control costs, mitigate risk, and manage cases in the face of varying types of matters.  Specifically, he explains how StoredIQ:

• Provides greater insight into ESI including unstructured documents within email, file shares, SharePoint, and other repositories;
• Facilitates more detailed early case analysis, allowing legal teams to analyze data in-place – prior to preservation and collection;
• Reduces the amount corporations spend on legal service provider review fees;
• Allows IT and Legal to work seamlessly together.

To learn more, download the whitepaper from the StoredIQ website at www.storediq.com.